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Idle no more? Sounds like a plan. We should all stop putting things off or tackling them feebly because they look too much like hard work. Especially Idle No More protestors.

Oh sure, they managed some theatrical shouting. But giving in to anger takes no discipline, minimal thought and little physical effort. Like almost everything else the "movement" did.

Consider how Theresa Spence finally got her meeting with the Governor General and stomped out early, feeling snubbed and complaining of mishandled wampum. It takes effort to engage in discussion, understand the other person's position, seek common ground and control your appetite for demanding everything and giving nothing. Storming out is the lazy answer.

Then there's the "hunger strike" where she didn't stop eating. She wanted the moral authority of a politically motivated fast but shirked the physical and moral work of resisting pain, fear and temptation.

There was a lot of talk about fish broth but none of that tiresome openness about what she was really consuming or how much.

Her supporters, including mainstream politicians, were also too lazy to ask what was going into her kettle of fish let alone insist on seeing it. I mean, was it clear broth or were there chunks? After six weeks of so-called fasting she looked pretty robust.

Chief Spence also seems to enjoy the salary, status and perks of office without being willing to do the hard work of bookkeeping, let alone finding real solutions to her people's problems.

She has her fancy car, her boyfriend bills $850 a day in "consulting" fees, and her people huddle in freezing shacks.

A sadly fitting inspiration for Idle No More blockades and protests generally.

It doesn't take much effort to sit around hitting a drum, burning the odd clump of sweet grass and reciting familiar laments about injustices 100 years before you were even born.

It's not remotely like putting in the long hours and taking the tough decisions that keep a business running today while other people sit whining around a fire someone else even lit for them. Besides, feeling badly done to is morally lazy; sucking it up and fixing the problem takes internal as well as external effort.

As for the movement's broad international support, you can "Like" something on Facebook in your pyjamas. Like the "Occupy" protests, this amorphous movement represents not an awakening of the spirit but its slothful slumbering.

I once walked through an "Occupy" camp in Regina on a snowy day and there didn't seem to be a person there; keeping warm is hard and toughing it out for a cause takes discipline.

But there were printed signs everywhere (hand-lettering original thoughts being, again, a lot like work) saying "I stand for something." Which I notice you're too lazy even to figure out let alone express clearly.

That a movement has no leaders, structure or dogma is not something to boast about. Organizing is work; leading effectively is work; devising a program strong enough to inspire yet sensible enough to unite is work. Vaguely declaring yourself pro-humanity and anti-bad-things in a party atmosphere is not.

The irony of an Idle No More movement built on physical, mental and moral laziness is obvious.

But it's also tragic because fixing problems, especially ones as intractable as aboriginal living conditions in Canada, requires relentless toil.

Consider two famous quotations from the Okanagan valley Osoyoos Indian Band's entrepreneurial chief Clarence Louie: "Indian time doesn't cut it," and "If your life sucks, it's because you suck." Both are summonses to hard work, internal then external.

Idle No More pure laziness

Real change takes more than shouting and dieting

Idle no more? Sounds like a plan. We should all stop putting things off or tackling them feebly because they look too much like hard work. Especially Idle No More protesters.

Oh sure, they managed some theatrical shouting. But giving in to anger takes no discipline, minimal thought and little physical effort. Like almost everything else the "movement" did.

Consider how Theresa Spence finally got her meeting with the Governor General and stomped out early, feeling snubbed and complaining of mishandled wampum. It takes effort to engage in discussion, understand the other person's position, seek common ground and control your appetite for demanding everything and giving nothing. Storming out is the lazy answer.